


Intangible

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: AU, Cloti - Freeform, F/M, Zerith - Freeform, bringing it over here, can you guess what Tifa and Cloud represent?, for ffnet, kind of a personification theme, wrote this several years ago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 05:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16847635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on Earth.  Cloud is here to make sure it is.  A bit of a darker AU.





	Intangible

His name was Zack Fair. He was just a boy, barely past being boy, not quite an adult but no longer a teen. A pale face with bright, eager eyes and an easy smile, a good heart that always outran his head. He wore his hair like a lion’s mane, all dark, spiky glory and he tended to shake it for emphasis when he was being dramatic. 

Zack was always being dramatic.

He was a young man full of life, on the verge of becoming something great.

And Cloud was going to kill him.

It didn’t happen often. Cloud moved between. Between moments, between heartbeats, between breathes. He passed from darkness to light and back to darkness and no one ever noticed him. At most someone would catch a flicker from the corner of their eyes and, turning their head quickly in reaction, find nothing there to be seen. He walked unnoticed through the lives that whirled away around him. Unknown, unseen, unacknowledged. It didn’t mean he left those lives untouched. 

Cloud wasn’t aware of how old he was or how long he’d slipped through the cracks of the world. Maybe he’d been something more once. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d been less. But he was Cloud and from time to time one of the blurred faces swirling past him as he traveled down crowded empty streets would shine suddenly, painfully brightly and grow crystal clear as it spun past. And Cloud would know. That face needed to be removed from the world.

He didn’t need a reason beyond that. The knowing deep in the core of him was enough. Clear faces, bright faces, they didn’t belong in the grey flow of life and so he removed them. Took their hard, crystalline structure from the soft, muddy flow of the world and the world flowed on because of it. There was no guilt – everything dies… There was no pleasure – everything dies… It was just what needed to be done and Cloud did it. Would keep doing it until he died and if that was centuries from now or tomorrow it made no difference.

Everything died… sometimes, it just died sooner rather than later.

The boy, man, child had flickered past the edges of his vision late one afternoon on the grey streets of a grey town under an overcast sky. Things moved too fast around Cloud to bother him most times, though it wasn’t really that everyone else was so fast as that he was simply – out of step with them. Their fast was his slow and his slow was – it made the edges of his lips curl – it was probably their dead. But the boy had swirled by in a pack of other people and the dim, distant laughter and excited voices hadn’t registered until – 

the face. The moment of crystal clear vision in which a single face came into focus and shone enough to wash out the grey and fill the world with overwhelming white.

Cloud raised his head like a wolf scenting prey but his eyes were narrowed against the light and the pain of it that stabbed into the backs of his pupils. Then the light was gone and the youth was passed and Cloud was turning his head almost lazily, almost bored, to watch. Except – it wasn’t boredom. It was something more basic. It was the settling of a call from fate into his soul, like a pebble dropped into a deep, mossy well that went down forever. Just as slow, just as calm, Cloud turned from where he’d been heading and went the other direction. Following that moment of light. That crystal in the mud.

Time didn’t mean anything when you were lost in the cracks of the world. Cloud had no rush to kill the youth, no worry of losing sight of him. Like a rouge meteor caught by a planet’s unconscious gravity he would find himself drawn to the boy over and over again, through time and distance until he took the opportunity and killed him.

Until he plucked the crystal from the mud and let the sluggish stream flow freely again.

Filled with a purpose again, the edges of Cloud solidified. Just a little. Just enough to be a shadow passing by in an empty hall, just enough to be the footsteps down an alley with no one to claim them. He could smell the world at times like this and was surprised, all over again, eternally, by the sense of smell. Frying food coming from a restaurant door, rain puddleing in under a window, a mangy dog that barked as he slipped past. 

Flowers in a church…

He saw the boy again and the boy was older but still wasn’t a man. The face was still clear, the eyes still bright, the smile still easy. The youth was surrounded by friends at a pub, telling a story that made them laugh and two tables away a little brunette in glasses pretended to read her book at her empty table and stole shy glances at the boy over the top of the unturned pages. Cloud sat at the stool of the bar and forgot about all of them for a little while as the bartender passed a drink down the counter that he couldn’t remember afterward. Cloud tasted the sharp, smoky liquid in the glass and smiled a smile that didn’t touch his eyes as he looked down into its reflective surface and saw nothing but amber.

He left the boy alone.

Not yet…

The next time the boy was in a churchyard, standing in front of graves and his face matched them. Pale and still. The little brunette stood a little behind him and the light rain misted her glasses. She took them off and her eyes were as green as the grass around the old graves. Cloud rested gloved fingers on the cold surface of the stones and felt the damp through them and his smile was a little more real.

Not yet…

The next time though, it was on a train and it was nighttime. The lights of the city screamed by, making the black blacker and the fear rising out of the train compartments stronger. Cloud felt it in his blood and it made his heart thud in a single, heavy beat, surprising him. He stood on the roof of one of the cars and felt the world tearing past in the wind and the screams and the neon lights. Under his boots the cars rocked alarmingly, pushed past their safety speeds, their screaming metal wheels threatening to lift off the tracks every time the train took the slightest turn. He felt the sway and yet there was no danger of him falling or being swept off and away into the ink black night. The wind did move through his hair though, tickling his scalp and pushed against his eyes, making them narrow. And he smiled. Because it felt good. The smile reached the very outer edges of his blue blue eyes.

Up ahead he felt the youth. Could feel the heart pumping inside the young man, feel the sweat struggling cold down his skin between his shoulder blades and under his arms. Cloud could feel the fear and the adrenaline and the excitement and the determination in the dark haired youth. Starting to smile now himself, Cloud launched himself forward and felt the muscles of his legs bunch and stretch, felt the blood pouring through them again, felt the wind cold against his exposed skin and the way it poured like ice water down his throat and made his lungs expand. His footsteps took on a solid quality that shuddered up his legs and he felt the sway of the train under him and compensated instinctively to each small shudder and twitch.

Ahead of him the bright-eyed boy ran.

And Cloud closed on him.

Cloud felt the weight of the sword between his shoulder blades, remembered – again – that he wore one. His hand came back over his shoulder and closed over the hilt of the giant sword. Felt the rough braid that covered the hilt, felt the familiar completing roundness against his palm through his glove.

Could almost taste metal in his mouth…

The boy was ahead of him and speeding up, pale eyes determined and sure, alight with fire and joy. He had a sword too, though it was small compared to Cloud’s. He wasn’t paying attention to Cloud closing on him though. Didn’t even notice the blond man behind him. The youth’s eyes were on the last car before the out of control engine and that all important joint coupling that linked the doomed locomotive to the helpless passenger cars behind it. His nostrils flared he was so close and the youth’s hands tightened on the hilt of his sword as he pulled it free. 

Cloud’s hand tightened on the hilt of his own sword and his leg muscles contracted and tensed even as his boots found traction and his shoulders knit.

The bright-eyed boy smiled.

Cloud’s boots left train and he launched forward even as the youth started to do the same. The smile that touched Cloud’s lips was real and pale.

Something dark and light flew out of the night. Something that had been behind Cloud that, somehow, he hadn’t noticed. Impossible and even more impossible when that light and shadow hit him with the force of a small falling star. The skin under his clothes and where it was exposed screamed at the sudden contact. At contact it had never felt before or didn’t remember if it had and in that instant, the train vanished into the night. A coupling screamed as it was stuck apart. Iron wheels began the breathtaking process of starting to slow where they had been turning red hot against the rails.

And Cloud impacted with the rough cement of an alleyway where water lay in pools, giant dumpsters created small hovels of rust and rot, and dirt and grime lay in drifts like the mockery of a forgotten desert. 

The fallen star tumbled with him, moonlight and night murmur and Cloud smelled – 

honeysuckle…

His throat closed in him and blocked off the scream that wanted to tear, raw and feral and hopelessly lost out of his lungs. Hair like whispers fell around his face and across his exposed arms as he rolled, tickling the skin and teasing it with fire. There was a body wrapped around him and it was soft and supple where it met his, where he pressed into it or its warmth lay against him. He opened his eyes as their bodies impacted on the ground, startled blue like electric, and saw – 

Starlight. Shadow. Night whispers. A woman sighing in the dark. A baby’s content gurgle. A man screaming. 

He lay on his back and the damp of the night soaked through the back of his shirt and pants, felt cold but his skin burned where she lay against him.

It was a she.

He could feel the way her chest moved against his when she breathed in erratic gasps. He could feel the way her bare legs slid like silk, like water…

like sin…

against the fabric of his pants when he moved his leg. He felt every curve and dimple of her body against his and it made the skin and muscle and bone of him scream at the unfamiliarity of it. He raised a hand and closed it over one of her star pale arms, sleeveless like his and she turned her head at his move and sent her tormenting hair across new patches of skin that it hadn’t branded already. He caught her face in glimpses. The pale curve of a cheek like a new moon. The pool of a liquid eye, forever deep and ruby hued. The almost archless wing of her brow, the dove whisper of her lashes against her cheek.

The pale blush of a perfect lower lip.

Her eyes flicked to him than and they were surprised and large and as ancient as the night. As dark as the space between the stars and just as swallowing. He caught the impact of her face fully and it made every muscle in him knot painfully. In that instant, he hated her and loved her more than the world was strong enough to hold.

Then she was rolling, slipping, and her arm twisted out of his grasp. Her body left his and again, his throat closed to deny the scream that tried to wrench out of his gut. He was on his feet in an instant, half crouched and ready to launch at her. Reclaim her. 

But she was somehow, inexplicably, at the head of the alley already and he caught the pale light of her face as she gave him a glance over her shoulder and was gone.

He was at the mouth of the alley in front of the empty train tracks in an instant.

And she was already gone.

He went to his knees and wretched and it was dry and dusty because his body couldn’t remember the last time it had actually had anything in it to be sick with. His hands spread, clawed, spread again on the chipped, worn concrete of the bypassed train station and his suddenly remembered stomach heaved again. He was helpless to stop it and that surprised him too. He had forgotten that his body wasn’t the same as his mind.

Afterward, he gulped in breaths of the cold air and it cleansed him as if it had been cold water. He shifted from kneeling to sitting and started at the barren city, lost and forgotten in front of his blank eyes, his arm over a raised knee. His skin burned wherever the whisper of her hair had brushed it, feeling like ant bites that moved. His body felt tight and uncomfortable and retained the memory of the imprint of her form against him. He stood up and deliberately went to find people.

They were dancing, blurs of motion and color and breath that smelled of alcohol. Music played loud but to his ears it was distant and tinny. He heard laughter and lies, felt too much body heat and the pearls of sweat on skin. He reached out and a woman shivered and ached and looked behind her to see nothing. Cloud felt nothing more than a man does when he puts his hand through smoke. A little heat, a little pressure, and a lingering scent on his skin. It soothed the ant bites of fire but only briefly. He stepped into the middle of the dance floor and people passed around and against him and went away aching for something they didn’t understand, their throats tight and a strange longing in their hearts. Cloud shut his eyes and let their vague smoke wash at the fiery memory of midnight hair and skin as soft as sin. Eventually the people faded and it was daylight that came in the cracks that passed as windows and the only person left pushed a broom around the room and couldn’t seem to remember to sweep a certain spot in the center of it. Cloud left the room and the broom pusher sighed in relief and didn’t know why.

Cloud’s skin settled. Everything dies… The traces of honeysuckle stopped haunting his nostrils and was replaced by the smell of diesel and hot donuts and a rat rotting away in a gutter behind a school full of children. His eyes lost their focus and he drifted again. Waiting…

He stood in the rain and let its cold kisses dance across his skin and soak his hair. He touched the flowers a girl was selling and felt the way they sprang back under his fingers when he pressed them down and let go. He stood too close to an open kitchen window and found his lips sprinkled with cinnamon.

He found the boy again on a murky, overcast night in an alley near a forsaken church.

There was a girl with him. A little brunette with huge green eyes behind delicate glasses. She clutched several flat, dusty smelling books against her chest and the boy who wasn’t a boy anymore stood in front of her, hands fisting at his sides as other males moved like sharks in the restrictive space in front of him. Cloud saw the light on the boy’s face, felt the anger and the determination and the strange protective softness. There was no sweat, no adrenaline tonight but Cloud knew it was time and he moved forward with determined, steady strides. Not rushing, not lingering. It was a job to be done, a crystal to be taken and there was no emotion or thought process that needed to go into it. The sword weighed between his shoulder blades again and the feel was familiar and comforting as he suddenly remembered it again. He realized he had exhaled and he inhaled just to feel his lungs fill as his steps took on solidity. The first thug moved in and there was the flick of silver in his thrust. The youth turned it aside with a forearm and his other hand smacked forward in a fist that smashed in lips against teeth and cracked the nose bone. The others smelled blood – Cloud smelled the blood – and they all lunged forward at once at the youth. Cloud neither slowed nor speed up his long legged steady stride. It was a blur in front of him now, light eyed youth and forgettable thugs but it didn’t matter. 

Everything dies…

He unslung his sword with an easy motion and its weight felt good as it woke the muscles in his arm and shoulder. The unhurried steps shifted and his boots hit the ground solidly as the muscles in his legs suddenly took him, one, two quicker strides forward and the sword came up.

The bright-eyed boy ducked under an attacker and one of them came at him from his blind spot with the flicker of a knife in their hand…

Cloud’s sword began its curve and even in the murky, dead light it glinted almost blue to match the electric of his eyes.

Hands, long and slender and moonlight pale caught his wrist and he was suddenly unbalanced and flying through the air.

The surprise wasn’t there but neither had there been expectation. He flipped in midair and his legs took the brunt of the throw as he landed on his feet instead of his back. His sword was loose and coming around even as he charged at the whispers of light and sighs of darkness that made up the woman with the hair like brands of black fire. She threw herself backward and he pursued, intent on cleaving her in two and adding the scent of her copper blood to the honeysuckle that permeated the heavy night air. She spun, dodged, spun again. Launched herself off of her hands to avoid his sword and the blue fire of his eyes. Then she was on the wall and coming back at him hard, slipping in past the reach of his sword to flay him with fists and kicks that burned as they grazed him. 

Her skin glowed with its own soft light. He smelled honeysuckle and saw how her narrow eyes were like the darkest garnets the world had ever created. 

He let the sword go and closed with her fist to fist as behind them the youth with the bright eyes shook his head as the last of his attackers fell and turned to the brunette with worry in his eyes. Cloud’s forearms met with an impact that could have cracked bone against the fallen star’s forearms and they tested each other, eyes narrow over the brutal push. She gave first because he was stronger but as she did, she hooked her hands, like ivory claws over his forearms and rolled onto her back. Her boots came up and caught him in the stomach as she flung him overhead. He felt the pain of her kick and it surprised him even as he reached out with one hand and caught the lip of a broken chain link fence, using it to stop his momentum and swing him back around to crouch on its bent lip.

The boy was gone. The little brunette was gone and his fallen star was gone as well.

Cloud dropped back down into the alley and put his hand over his stomach. He went to find her.

She wouldn’t be found.

It – bothered him. He didn’t remember the last time he had been bothered. He didn’t know if he’d ever been bothered before at all. It was a strange mix of frustration, anger, resentment, need and a strange desire. He caught himself lifting his head whenever a new scent entered his sphere. Searching for honeysuckle. In the night, moonlight glinting off of surfaces would catch his attention but it was only borrowed light. Even the moon only borrowed its light. His fingers twitched for something soft and impossible. His steps refused to fade and when he moved past them now people raised their heads and looked skyward to see if there was a storm coming. He intentionally hunted down the boy because he only saw her there but the boy was eating at a diner with friends and the brunette was tucked into his side and she wasn’t there.

He had no name to call her by and she had no gravity to draw him physically to her. Only his mind came back to her again and again and his skin started to ache with a dull throbbing he didn’t recognize where her hair had once touched it.

He forgot to notice when the sun caught just right in a stained glass window and painted the sidewalk in front of it in ethereal jewels like dreams.

The boy drew him back again and this time a building was on fire. Cloud heard the screams from inside it, felt the furnace like heat, watched the wood and cinders of it glow red and spark upward to join the choking smoke. He watched the boy that wasn’t really a boy anymore at all dart into it and for the first time – he almost didn’t follow. He almost didn’t care. Old instinct surfaced however and he felt his feet taking him through the falling door and into the inferno beyond. He felt the licks of flame against his skin but it wasn’t her flame and it didn’t matter to him. He passed through it and it left no trace on him even as it ringed his pale hair with fire and reflected in the depths of his glowing blue eyes.

The youth was deep in the building and Cloud could feel the way the smoke filled his lungs, feel the way it laid heavy there and burned like liquid. He could feel the sweat that did nothing to cool him as it ran down the bright eyed boy’s frame, could smell the hair on his head as it started to singe and burn. He could feel the pain and the determination and the guilt and worry. His sword weighed between his shoulders again, reminding him it was there and he pulled it free as he climbed the stairs that shouldn’t have been able to bear his weight and measured out the moments left to the boy’s life in calm, unhurried steps. Above the youth, the ceiling started to groan and the boy tried to keep his voice level as he coaxed the last child in the house out from under the bed and into his arms. Cloud came into the room behind him and she was there.

The firelight coated her in red and gold, like him and it hid the embers of ruby in her own eyes with smoke and darkness. She was on the other side of the youth from him and across that body, struggling to breath, struggling to wrap the child in a blanket, their eyes met. The youth was trying to push himself off his knees and failing and Cloud brought his sword up and poised for the easy killing blow that would thrust its full length down through him and the child below. His eyes never left the woman’s…

And so he saw when she smiled.

The floor under the youth gave way and sent him tumbling with his precious cargo down to the ground floor below. The bed that fell with them fell sideways and it broke out the window on that level before falling over both the youth and the child. The falling, flaming boards that followed them down landed on it instead.

Cloud was moving before the bed had even stopped and he was across that empty hole in the floor as if it were a puddle to be stepped over. The sword was gone – wherever it went when it wasn’t in his hand and he had her in a bear hold before the youth under the bed had even realized he was still alive and started to push his way clear of the debris with the child clinging to him, drawn by the clean air that flowed in the broken window.

The woman in his arms twisted but Cloud held her locked against him and together they both hit the window. The glass shattered and fire roared out after them as they fell. Her legs were tangled with his and Cloud cursed the fact that he wore long pants because he knew her bare skin would be smooth like ivory, soft like suede, and cool enough to burn him. She tried to get free, twisting in his arms and he dug his fingers into her and used his larger bulk to trap her. They fell on the ruined side of the building, far from the concentrated panic where the youth they both watched over had struggled free of the fire and was presenting the child to hysterical parents. His lion’s mane was shorter than it had been when he’d gone in but he shook it slowly anyway at their praise.

Cloud made sure he was on top when they hit the ground and heard the sound it knocked out of her. Despite his intentions, they rolled and it pressed her body into his and tangled them together. Honeysuckle filled his lungs, a heavier presence than any smoke or liquid and her hair tangled across his vision and caught his world in its web.

She was on top when they came to a stop and immediately planted her knees on either side of his hips and braced her hands on his chest to push away. He knotted fingers in her long hair that slide over his gloves like water and pulled her mouth down to his.

The explosion it set off burst through his mind like a suddenly released ball of lightening and he tasted smoky, sharp amber and cinnamon. He tasted rosemary and honey. His tongue found her lips parted and slide in. Tasted fresh baked bread and chocolate and cranberries. She made a noise and it was like drowning to him. Pressing in past his ears to fill his lungs and stomach. He tasted coffee and orange marmalade. Her body moved against his and if he hadn’t been so busy kissing her he would have bitten her. His fingers dug in.

And then she was gone.

Like smoke through his fingers, she was gone. And he was lying on his back in darkness watching the sky burn above him as it made the moon red and swollen.

The world seemed even vaguer than usual when he finally rolled to his hands and knees and eventually his feet. He couldn’t smell the ruin of charred, wet wood or burned tar. The colors around him were a muddy grey again and the life swirled past him with less interest than leaves blown in an autumn breeze. He didn’t long, he didn’t ache, he didn’t revive. There was simply… nothing. His mind refused to offer comment on anything, his footsteps were as solid as fog in the morning. People he passed too close to sighed and wondered why they felt as if they’d missed something important all their lives and went home to turn on the television to drown out the lonely ache. He wasn’t waiting. And he wasn’t not waiting. The crack between seconds that he’d fallen into long ago seemed to have suddenly become wider and deeper, the pause between one dying heartbeat and the next. He was suspended in it and it gave him neither relief nor release.

He found the boy again and he was with the brunette. They were in bed together, lying limply across each other with sweat on their skin. The youth was sleeping and the girl was holding him – and silently weeping. Cloud felt a whisper and turned his head to catch moonlight from the corner of his eyes. The honeysuckle lingered in the air like a lover’s lie and he blinked and felt the world settle into place around him again.

He left the quiet room and found himself in a store as the sun rose muddy overhead. A child came in clutching a single coin and spent twenty minutes debating over the glass jars of candy that lined the countertop to one side. Cloud paused in his wandering to watch and after the child had left with its hard earned decision already making its mouth sticky, he made his own selection. For the first time he tasted licorice and wasn’t sure if he liked it or not – but it was new. Outside he passed through the shadowy blurs of people and stopped to watch a bird taking a bath in an anthill that had struggled up through a crack in the sidewalk. He smelled something fresh and green and followed it to a vegetable stand set up on the side of one of the busy, pointless intersections. He stood in the middle of a crowded bus station and closed his eyes just so that he could actually feel the smoky, lost whispers of people as they brushed past him and then wondered why they felt as if they should have done something different with their lives. 

He began to smell honeysuckle.

At first he wasn’t sure. It lingered around a weak looking young mother and the rosy baby she held so proudly in her arms. So faint he thought he was wrong. Except he smelled it again, barely there, on a three legged dog that bounded past, chasing a laughing boy. Time would drift and then he would find it again. In an alley, on a young girl, on a deck of cards in a gambler’s worn hands… traces of honeysuckle and cool moonlight. He was never close. She was never far.

He’d almost forgotten the boy with bright eyes until he found himself on a battlefield. It was the end of a long and bloody day at what looked like the end of a long and bloody war. The battlefield was scattered with the reminders of what had once been life and wasn’t anymore. Cloud moved through it emotionlessly. He’d seen battlefields before, he’d see them again. It was all part of the muddy flow of life on this planet.

Everything dies…

The bright-eyed boy was there and he wasn’t a boy anymore but entirely a man from the haunted look in his still clear eyes. His mane had grown back and become longer and he shook it now as he looked at the men with guns that were facing him across a small space of barren dirt. Behind him a comrade worked desperately to save the lives of two other men that were bleeding out into the hard earth that refused to accept their blood after a day of saturation. The enemy soldiers moved forward and the single man trying to save the lives of his companions looked up hopelessly and said something to the bright-eyed man. Who smiled and shook his head. And drew his sword. Cloud felt the familiar weight of his own blade between his shoulder blades again and drew it almost absently, leather of his glove creaking as he tightened his hand on the hilt. The bright-eyed man said something with a careless smile to his helpless companions behind him and then he charged forward into the outnumbered battle with a raw cry of challenge. Cloud felt the sweat on his skin, the sudden calm of his heart rate, the pride and the determination and he found that it made him smile barely there to himself.

He felt her then and he raised his head to see her, still moonlight and whisper shadows even in the sunlight. Her garnet and midnight eyes met his and they were full of tears. She spread her pale, beautiful, scarred hands and slowly shook her head.

“He’s run out of me,” she whispered with a catch in her silk and smoke voice and it was the only real sound in a world of cries and steel on steel and bullet reports. Cloud’s eyelids lowered but it was a nod of understanding. Turning his head, he focused on the bright-eyed man as his sword flashed and his last opponent fell. The bright-eyed man followed his enemy down though and Cloud stepped forward to stand over him. Those clear eyes looked up and for the first and last time, they met his as Cloud stood over his broken body with his giant sword blue and gold in the fading sun. The man, youth, boy smiled weakly.

“You finally came,” the youth strained it out of punctured lungs and Cloud nodded once to him, face expressionless. “Good,” the boy grunted and looked past Cloud to the darkening sky above. 

“Aerith…” he whispered and Cloud brought his sword down in a simple, easy move that shattered ribs and pierced heart beat from heart beat so that they couldn’t follow each other anymore. The bright-eyed boy’s face relaxed into contentment and warm gold light broke free with a cry of joy and rushed upward, ruffling Cloud’s hair as it sprang past. Cloud lifted his head to watch it go even though, even in his world, it was already moving so fast it was long gone. He smelled something rich and alive and laughing and then that too disappeared. Unnoticed to him, the men that the bright-eyed boy had been defending were rescued by their belatedly arriving forces and a circle gathered in silence around the fallen body that had lost what had once made the eyes so bright and clear. They didn’t register to Cloud as anything other than shadows and smoke but glints of crystal, too small to notice solidified to life in some of them. Cloud lowered his face and the battlefield was empty with grass beginning to spring up to cover its scars. Moonlight and shadow was across from him and she reached out her glowing hands and touched him.

He smelled honeysuckle and drew her into his arms. She came like a woman’s welcoming whisper and when he lowered his head to share his new tastes with her she raised her face and parted her lips for him.

She was liquid on a barren day, cool breezes through sullen skies, the broken sound of a piano… She was strawberries and salt and lemonade… Her body moved against his and she was insanity and the only thing that had really ever made sense…

She would be his end and – somehow – she had been there at his beginning.

Slow, her body began to unwind against his, like smoke starting to slowly blow away in tangled winds. He had no voice, could not ask.

She heard him anyway.

“Yes…” it was a promise, an eternity. “As long as you are there for them, I will be there too. Every hero needs us both.”


End file.
